Exclusive: Craige McMillan says America as a nation is as guilty as Obama, Bergdahl

Obama’s latest case of historical revisionism – trading five terrorists from the Gitmo Hilton for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, whom some of his fellow soldiers describe not as a hero, but as a deserter – raises an interesting question. Does treason even exist anymore?

Your answer is probably colored by your loyalties. If you are one of the self-anointed elites in the world, you have already decided that the world’s problems are too many and too large for national or international solution. What is required is a world government. This government, of course, must be run by yourself and other true believers.

Thus treason in the traditional sense – against a national government – is simply a linguistic speed bump on the road toward the world’s salvation through all-powerful government. The ends, after all, justify the means.

On the other hand, if you are a soldier, temporarily stationed behind enemy lines and assigned there to stop attacks on your own nation, your view is rather different. In this case treason by a fellow soldier is upfront, personal and in-your-face. It is a life-threatening event. You know it when you see it.

What about the rest of us? We likely end up somewhere between those two opposing ends of the definition of treason. We’re not very elite, and we’re not the soldiers on the ground. What’s treason?

I’m sure this isn’t understood in Washington, D.C., but treason is a larger concept than attempting to change the government by force. Treason also applies to actions taken to undermine the institutions and ideals that built and sustain a nation in the world.

Why? Because a nation only exists when it draws life and nurture from the institutional pillars upon which it rests. These institutions are the fabric of life that binds together the people of that nation. Without these institutions, that nation becomes a rotting hulk laying out in the desert sun, being devoured by the insects that take care of such things. So in the larger sense, attacking the institutions that make any nation what it is really is treason against that nation.

But we don’t call it that. There is, however, another word. We don’t use that word, because we don’t know it. The word is apostasy: The abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief. Merriam-Webster expands the definition to “1) renunciation of a religious faith or 2) Abandonment of a previous loyalty (see defection).”